ANKARA, April 4 (Reuters) - Turkey's energy minister said on
Thursday talks were continuing with Japan and China on the
construction of a second nuclear power station, and denied a
media report saying a decision had been made on who would build
the plant.

The Nikkei business daily said Japan-based Mitsubishi Heavy
Industries Ltd and Areva SA, the world's
biggest builder of nuclear reactors, had won an order to build
the plant, a project expected to cost around $22 billion.

Areva shares rose as much as 8 percent in Paris after the
report, which cited Japanese and Turkish sources. Spokesmen for
Areva and Mitsubishi Heavy had no immediate comment.

"When the competition is over we will take the decision over
which country is going to build the plant. We haven't made a
decision for the nuclear power plant yet," Turkish energy
minister Taner Yildiz told Reuters.

The Nikkei report said Turkey's Energy and Natural Resources
Ministry had informed Japanese government and corporate
officials of the decision to award the deal to build four
pressurized water nuclear reactors with a combined capacity of
about 4.5 gigawatts at Sinop on the Black Sea.

The paper added the Turkish government had approached Japan
about a summit meeting between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe and Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan in early May, after
which it is likely to officially grant preferred negotiating
rights to the Mitsubishi-Areva consortium.

Turkey, which is likely to overtake Britain as Europe's
third-biggest electricity consumer within ten years, plans to
build several nuclear plants over the next decade to reduce its
dependence on imported oil and gas.

Prime Minister Erdogan has been an advocate of the country's
ambitious nuclear programme, which aims to provide 10 percent of
the country's total electricity needs by 2030.

Construction is set to start in 2017, with the first reactor
slated to come online by 2023, and France's GDF Suez SA
would operate the plant, the paper added.

NO CONFIRMATION

Turkish energy sources said the Japanese consortium included
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Itochu Corp and GDF Suez and that
the consortium had proposed to install Areva's Atmea reactors in
the power plants.

But they did not confirm that the Japanese consortium had
won the contract.

A spokesman for GDF Suez confirmed the company might
cooperate with Mitsubishi Heavy and Areva to bid for the
contract.

"We are considering the possibility of working with the
Japanese team to propose a reactor of the Atmea type," a GDF
Suez spokesman said.

The Atmea1 reactor is a 1,100 megawatt pressurized water
reactor developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Areva in
their Atmea joint venture.

To date, it has not been sold or built anywhere, but Areva
hopes to sell it in Turkey, Jordan, Vietnam and Argentina.

Areva has four reactors of its main model - the 1,600
megawatt EPR reactor - under construction: two in China, one in
Finland and one in France. The latter two are years behind
schedule and billions over budget.

Turkey had also been in talks with companies from Canada,
South Korea and China over the planned Sinop plant.

Russia's Rosatom will build Turkey's first nuclear power
station and start construction in mid-2015. It expects the
facility to start producing electricity in 2019, its deputy
general manager told Reuters in February.

That $20 billion plant at Mersin Akkuyu on the Mediterranean
coast will also have four power units with installed capacity of
4.8 GW.
(Additional reporting by Osamu Tsukimori in Tokyo and Geert De
Clercq in Paris; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer and Mark Potter)